James Thomson

Hail, mildly pleasing Solitude,
Companion of the wise and good,
But from whose holy piercing
The herd of fools and villains fly

The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;
And fortune smiled deceitful on her birth:
For, in her helpless years deprived of all,
Of every stay, save innocence and Heaven,

The western sun withdrawn the shorten'd day,
And humid evening, gliding o'er the
In her chill progress, to the ground
The vapours throws

He, when young Spring protrudes the bursting gems,
Into his freshened soul; her genial
He full enjoys; and not a beauty
And not an opening blossom breathes in vain

What is the task that to the muse belongs
What but to deck in her harmonious songs The beauteous works of nature and of art,
Rural retreats that cheer the heavy heart
Then Marle Field begin, my muse, and sing;

Our bard, to modern epilogue a foe,
Thinks such mean mirth but deadens generous woe;
Dispels in idle air the moral sigh,
And wipes the tender tear from Pity's eye:

Waked by his warmer ray, the reptile
Came wing'd abroad; by the light air
Lighter, and full of soul
From every

The stag, too, singled from the herd, where
He ranged, the branching monarch of the shade,
Before the tempest drives
At first, in

Confess'd from yonder slow-extinguish'd clouds,
All ether softening, sober Evening
Her wonted station in the middle air;
She sends on earth; then that of deeper

As thus the snows arise; and foul and fierce,
All winter drives along the darken'd air;
In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes,

Cramm'd to the throat with wholesome moral stuff,
Alas
poor audience
you have had enough

Oh
knew he but his happiness, of
The happiest he, who, far from public rage,
Deep in the vale, with a choice few